Team:SVA-NYC/Microfluidic Modules

SVA-NYC

Microfluidic Modules

Microfluidic Modules

We dedicated this section for our microfluidic chip designs as a way of highlighting the potential for open-source community based module sharing. In the world of microfluidics, form begets function thus the heart of any functional chip is the circuit layout itself. The process of designing and testing chips for proper function is a very time consuming and laborious task so our future goal is to aid teams and researchers with the ability to tweak already existing designs to fit their need rather than starting from scratch. We would like to invite iGEM teams as well as established laboratories working with microfluidics to host their designs for the world to tweak and share. A large part of the scientific community is moving toward more open-source research and our hope is to establish a free-to-access repository of modules leveraging web-hosting infrastructure like GitHub already in place for the distribution of a wide variety of digital media. Below are some of the designs we produced along the way:

Simple Y Combiner

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A simple introductory module for mixing two solutions into one with 6mm inlets and outlets. This device was documenting in action on our main project video using thymol blue and soil extract. The resulting liquid became yellow in color after 1 minute incubation at room temp. This module can be used as a protocol validation tool for troubleshooting every aspect of microfluidic chip master mold production.

Prototype pH Sensor Circuit (6-channel variant)

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Our latest iteration of the pH sensor we wished to incorporate into our mobile phone platform. This chip only went through preliminary flow testing which resulted in some success. Further testing and tweaking would be necessary to achieve synchronous flow across all channels.